


Doctor in charge

by Naraht



Category: Return to Night - Mary Renault
Genre: F/M, Older Woman/Younger Man, Oral Fixation, PWP, Woman on Top
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-02
Updated: 2014-02-02
Packaged: 2018-01-10 23:18:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1165778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hilary and Julian, a fortnight after their wedding.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doctor in charge

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Porn Battle XV, to the prompts: silk, Oedipal, oral fixation.

Hilary's parents had always kept separate bedrooms. In retrospect one realised that there must have been nocturnal traffic - for Hilary was the youngest of six - but the arrangement still had for her the power of unquestioned normality. It was one tradition that she had never had the chance to challenge with David. As residents in the same hospital - on the same floor - they had never needed to live together, never been more than visitors in one another's beds.

Now, barely a fortnight after the wedding, Hilary was beginning to awaken to the realisation that the man lying beside her was not her lover but her husband. He lived here, in her rooms, under Lisa's roof. He belonged with her. In her bed.

Julian seemed unmoved by any feeling of strangeness. He sighed, curled warm against her.

"Are you awake?" he asked in a low voice, husky with the night.

"Yes. I was just thinking."

He nuzzled against her, just where her cheek met her ear, his lips slightly parted. Hilary shivered deliciously at the tickle of his warm breath.

"Ought I to ask?"

"Nothing important," she said. "Come here, my dear."

She could hardly pull him closer than he was already. Nonetheless as she wrapped her arms around him she could feel his whole body relaxing into the embrace. For a few heartbeats he lay entirely still, trusting to her command. She had the feeling that if she had told him to stay as he was, held him through the night, he would have done as she said. But she wanted more; she suspected he did too.

"I do love you," she whispered.

It was as if she had given him permission. A moment later she felt his kiss against her neck. Another a few inches lower. He suckled hard at her skin, a faint shift of his hips telegraphing his growing arousal. 

Hilary had always been fascinated by the process. She slid her hand down between them, through his pyjama bottoms pressing against the damp warmth of his cock.

Julian sighed, sucked harder.

"A little lower," said Hilary softly. "You'll leave a mark; I can't wear a scarf all the time."

Obediently he stopped, resting his forehead against her. He was breathing hard. Absentmindedly Hilary continued to work her hand against him. She liked it; she was surprised by how much she liked it. But Julian was pressing his hips into her touch. It would be easy to go too far. He was young, he hadn't the control...

"Are you," he began. "Do... oh."

"Just as you are, darling. Just as you are." She slipped her hand into his pyjama bottoms, curled her fingers firmly around him. "There. Do you like it?"

"Yes," he admitted, as though she had extorted a confession.

After all, why should she not go on? They had all night. 

(Besides this there was the thought, which she never would have shared: that he was always more manageable once he had exhausted the impulse of his first, frantic desire.)

Julian slid the strap of her nightgown over her shoulder. He took one of her nipples into his mouth with a greedy sound, opening his mouth wide, his tongue urgent and wet against her skin. Hilary held his head with her other hand, fingers tangling in his hair. She pressed him closer to her. 

She had not known that it was possible to feel like this, the burn of physical desire so mixed with a fierce, triumphant tenderness that she felt she would melt, dissolve with the intensity of it. Julian was lost in his own pleasure and this pleased her too. Even in moments like this David had never seemed to lose control. But Julian... Julian was in the palm of her hand. She stroked him harder.

Her nipple slid out of his mouth with a small pop. He murmured against her breastbone, whimpered softly.

"My boy," said Hilary. "My darling boy. Yes."

He shuddered as he came.

He lay against her, silent. She could feel the chill of the night now, the dampness of sweat on her skin, his and hers mingled together. Gooseflesh puckered her bare breast until Julian pillowed his cheek against it. 

She wanted to weep a little at the rightness of the world.

"Oh God," said Julian quietly, finally. "That was unutterably selfish of me. You must be appalled."

"Not at all. The whole thing was in my hands from start to finish."

A silence. "Hilary, that was awful."

"I'm sorry," she said, laughing. "But it was true, my dear!"

He shook his head in the darkness. Hilary kissed his wet forehead.

"Besides," she added reassuringly, "it's not as if the interval will be so long."

After saying this she wondered whether it had been inappropriately clinical, but it was accurate.

"No," Julian agreed. "I should get cleaned up."

When he returned from the bathroom he was freshly scrubbed, smelling appealingly of soap. Hilary smiled up at him invitingly - as he must be expecting - conscious as she did so of her disarranged hair and the irremediably creased silk of her nightgown. She accepted the damp towel that he offered her to clean off her own hand, wondering whether she might not seem, upon sober reflection, faintly disappointing to him.

"But you're shivering," he said.

He slid into bed beside her and Hilary let him fold her into his arms. He was always so warm; though of course one knew that it was nothing more than a matter of the rate of caloric consumption, there was still something mysteriously delightful about it. 

"Hilary, you're an angel," he said, kissing her hair.

"Am I?" she asked curiously.

"I always wondered what it would be like, you know, to go to bed with a woman, and it turns out I hadn't the slightest idea."

"Why, what did you think it would be like?"

Hilary cast her mind back to herself at twenty-three. She had, she supposed, been too busy or too wilfully blind to have given much thought to the question. Three months after finishing finals she had had a proposal from a young man, the grandson of one of her father's friends. It had seemed at the time a desperate irrelevance - for she had already been determined to train as a doctor - and he had had none of the personal charms that would have led her to speculate further. Once she had met David, she had hardly needed to speculate.

"Sordid, I suppose," said Julian. "All instinct, the sort of thing that makes you feel desperately excited and sick at the same time. Romantic on the surface but really rather bloody. Like war, if you see what I mean."

"I suppose I do," she said, marvelling that he always seemed to come up with such picturesque metaphors.

"When really it turned out that I couldn't possibly know, because it's loving someone that makes all the difference."

It was a gentle commonplace but, on Julian's lips, it had the power of truth. Her inability to avoid pondering whether it was a general truth made Hilary feel unwarrantedly cold-blooded. She still could not think that there had been anything sordid in her affair with David, although it was now equally clear that there had been nothing of love in it, at least not as Julian would understand the term. It had been satisfying, of course. But it was equally true that it had been nothing like this.

Julian was caressing her idly, with a surface abstractedness that concealed greater concentration. His smooth hands, untouched by manual work of any kind, slipped easily over the silk, circling her breasts, her stomach, sliding down to track the inner curve of her thigh. Hilary's attention was drawn forcibly back to the present.

She caught her breath. His hand paused in its progress, lightening its touch to one questioning finger. 

Hilary, impatient, reached down to press his hand hard between her thighs. She rocked her hips against him, feeling the thin fabric between them already soaked through. Julian's grasp was firm - those slim, strong fingers that with equal ease could hold the reins of a hunter or guide the flight of a plane. _He could have been a surgeon_ , she thought, and knew it was not true. Nonetheless she could not think of an FRCS in England whose touch she would welcome more.

She buried her face against him, tonguing the hollow of his neck, tasting the sweetness of soap and the salt of new sweat just transpiring. With David, in the close quarters of a hospital, there had always been the necessity of silence. Here, too, she was conscious that Lisa was sleeping not so far away, but she wanted to shout aloud.

Julian pulled her nightgown up around her waist, pressing his fingers more securely home. Hilary squirmed in pleasure, feeling the throb of congested blood, the tightening of her muscles around his fingers, his thumb circling her clitoris.

"Darling," she said, unable to think what else needed saying. "Oh."

"May I..." whispered Julian in her ear. "Shall I, if you'll let me I will..."

It was as if he expected her to say no. She knew what he was asking; she was the one who had taught him to ask.

"Do. Please."

He did not hesitate; he got out of bed. Hilary slid to the edge, throwing open her legs to receive him. For a moment she felt a pang at losing the warmth of his embrace, but this was how he liked it best, kneeling on the floor at the bedside, and she could afford to indulge him.

Julian leant forward, gently parting her curls with a hand. She could hear the soft sounds of anticipation in his throat, but she was the one who gasped when she felt the first touch of his tongue. Burying his face between her thighs, he sucked as greedily as he had done at her breast.

All conscious thought dissolved in a haze of pleasure. Hilary lifted her hips to meet him, arched her back, pressed forward. In the darkness she squeezed her eyes shut, seeing phosphene starbursts. Her lips tingled with dizzy hyperventilation.

Her climax came as always a moment before she was expecting it, a moment too soon. It had a majestic insistence utterly beyond free will, control, planning, beyond anything but joy. She trembled in the grip of it, then felt it slowly wash away once again.

Hilary sighed with half-regretful satisfaction. Somewhere in the darkness Julian was still kneeling, cradling her hips in his hands.

"Come back to bed, my dear," she said.

Julian obeyed quietly, climbing back under the covers beside her. Hilary leaned against him in a state of comfortable, exhausted vacancy, feeling that she ought to be saying or doing something more than she was, but really unable to feel anything other than the small, rhythmic contractions that carried on (it always surprised her) for so long afterwards.

"Was that good?" Julian asked.

"It still is. Shhhh."

He remained silent until Hilary began groping on the bedside table for her cigarette case. Finally she had to turn on the light. Julian blinked at her inquiringly, his irises quickly narrowing in the dazzle. When she offered him the case he shook his head.

Hilary lit a cigarette, exhaled happily. Beside her Julian rolled onto his side, pillowing his cheek on his hands. 

"One always imagines you making notes afterwards for your files," he said. "You know: _patient uncooperative, coordination poor, further tests necessary_."

It was only at this point that Hilary realised Julian was waiting - fishing, really - for further praise. She still failed to anticipate the need; David had been so confident in his abilities that it had always seemed superfluous.

She smiled. "Full marks, my dear, couldn't you tell?"

"I'd always rather hear it from you."

"Well, now you have done. Perhaps a psychologist might say you had an oral fixation but I haven't the slightest complaint."

Julian threw his arm around her, squeezed her tightly. A moment later he threw his leg over her as well.

Hilary took another drag on her cigarette. "Poor boy, you're ready again, aren't you?"

"I can wait," said Julian unconvincingly.

"Oh?"

"Of course."

He kissed her shoulder. Lingeringly. Patience was not, she thought, one of his virtues.

Hilary stubbed out the fag end in the ashtray. Putting one finger under his chin, she guided his lips to hers.

He kissed her almost as forcefully as he had done that first evening. Since then he had begun to learn the measure of his own strength - and the limits of hers - but nonetheless she still braced herself in the moment that he rolled atop her.

Hilary cast her mind back to just after dinner. She had cleaned her teeth and then... yes, she could envision taking the small case out of her sponge-bag. She had definitely put in her cap.

"What is it?" asked Julian, frowning slightly. He stopped, poised above her. "Have I hurt you?"

"Not at all."

"What is it, then? You always get the most faraway look in your eyes just about now. It's as though for a moment you suddenly forget I exist."

Hilary gasped with laughter. "Oh, my dear. I just make a point of remembering whether I have my cap in, that's all. David always used to ask. I suppose it got me into the habit."

Julian received this more seriously than it deserved. "Ought I to ask?"

"No, I don't think so, it was always rather clinical." It had been - and she had thought this at the time - as though he were about to open a surgical patient and was making sure that he had all his instruments in order. "You've trusted me this far, anyway."

"Of course I trust you," said Julian.

She raised her eyebrows at him. The look of utter, naked adoration that he returned made her quizzical expression seem suddenly and entirely inadequate. He was still impossibly beautiful; the shock of it hardly diminished with time.

"So come to me then, darling."

Julian obeyed her with all the urgency and vitality befitting a man of his age. He slid into her with ease. With each hard thrust Hilary felt herself sliding slowly but inexorably towards the headboard. One more and - she put up a hand to fend off the inevitable concussing blow.

"Sorry," said Julian, pausing.

Together they moved a little way down the bed. Hilary was impressed by his considerateness, but her encounter with the headboard had put her in a practical - though not unromantic - mood. She reached up to take his face in her hands, and kissed him. It was a gesture that by now had become familiar to the two of them.

"My dear," she said, "would you mind terribly if we were to take this the other way round?"

Julian's reply was all ingenuous charm, mixed perhaps with a faint surprise that she had needed to ask. "Of course not." 

_Perhaps someday he will mind_ , thought Hilary. _But not yet. Not yet._

The position had, after all, been given sanction by Marie Stopes more than twenty years ago now.

All in one graceful motion, Julian folded her into his arms and rolled over, taking her so neatly along with him that it could have been choreographed for the stage. She lay against him propped on her elbows, catching her breath for a moment. He looked up at her expectantly, dearly and absurdly young. 

Hilary sat back on her heels, still straddling him, and stripped off her damp, superfluous nightgown. She tossed it aside, ignoring an unbidden mental image of hospital scrubs.

Julian's look became even more admiring. He thrust up into her once, half-unconsciously, and then sighed, his dark eyelashes fluttering.

"Have you been a good boy?" asked Hilary.

"I've tried to be," said Julian, his expression flickering between doubt and helpless entreaty.

At some point she had stopped being ashamed of saying things like this to him in bed. Julian had a way of eliciting in her this protective impulse for mastery, as instinctive as his own desires, as natural as - and apparently inseparable from - her love for him. 

Another time she would question it. Not tonight. He was hard inside her, fully and completely aroused, trembling at the limits of his own self-control. Hilary circled her hips experimentally and caught her breath. She was wet, past ready; she ached for more.

"I think you have," she said. "My dearest boy."

She leaned forward to embrace him, rocking slowly. Julian brought his hips up to meet her with every motion, burying himself in her. _Up to the hilt_ , thought Hilary, deliciously clenching and releasing her muscles around him.

"Hilary."

Julian had cupped her breasts in her hands, stroking and palpating them with fascinated insistence. Now he lifted his head off the pillow, straining to come closer to her. 

Hilary leaned over him and guided her breast into his mouth. She buried her face in his thick hair, holding him close as he sucked urgently at her. He matched the rhythm of her motion - a little harder than she might have liked, but no matter. His thrusts came quicker and quicker, his movements jerky as his impatience overtook him.

"There," murmured Hilary meaninglessly. "There."

He came suddenly with a muffled cry, gone pliant in her arms. 

For a moment they remained still, holding one another just as they had been before, as if they could remain like that forever. Then Julian let her breast slip from his mouth. Hilary, who had been cradling his head in one hand, lowered it back to the pillow. She brushed a curl of hair back from his damp forehead, and he smiled muzzily up at her, his eyes not quite coming into focus.

Ignoring the inevitable stickiness of the aftermath, Hilary arranged herself to lie more comfortably atop him. She rested her own head on her shoulder, thinking that there was something delicious about even the faint scent of his sweat.

"Mmm," she said, idly caressing the curve of his other shoulder. "My sweet. That was marvellous."

It was a pardonable exaggeration.

"I love you, Hilary," replied Julian, as if it had needed saying as soon as possible. "I love you so much. Thank God we're finally married. Now nothing can keep us apart."

"Oh, my darling, you know I love you more than anything." Hilary nuzzled at him. "But please, don't make a habit of saying things like that. I might start to believe you."


End file.
